Disappointment for Young & Old

Hey, Michael Young! I remember you spilling gallons of milk on your way out of town. Jays fans have spent a good 10 years crying over all that high quality wooyoo. But now, having been asked to move your immobile ass out of Elvis Andrus's way, you want out of Texas! For one, you should have begged out of Texas years ago for reasons too numerous to list, but your refusal to be a "team player" should stoke the fires of Blue Jays fans on the lookout for the next player who's name they don't have to bother learning.

Young's Overbay-esque 2008 (poor performance blamed on hand injury) has brought his value below zero. He just received a huge raise, despite being a sub-standard shortstop accompanied by offensive production in sharp decline. So please, Blue Jays fans, don't insist that JP could trade him for Jason Frasor and is incompetent for not doing so. Nobody is going near this guy for anything more than a song, and for good reason.

Somewhat Exciting Site News!

Hard to believe that it was one full year ago that today we chained the first monkey to the first stolen laptop with dreams of one day compiling the perfect listicle and/or adding sweet nuance to our particular brand of slander. Many things have changed along the way, and hopefully things will keep changing for the better (fingers crossed for fewer than 3 tenses per post in 2009. We can be doing thems!)

In honor of this meaningless milestone; I've opted for two different synopses of our year. The first you see above, as told by Walter and the Dude. Below I've selected one post from each month which has stuck out in my memory.

Thanks for reading etc for the past year, here's hoping for at least a couple more!

• January! The Raul Mondesi Story. The foundations of scumbaggery were laid long ago.
  
• February! The Ridiculous Rocco Serendipity Story. When the TTC, Rocco, and fate collide.
  
• March! In which I express my disdain for hustling dirt dogs. I don't miss Reed, though he would have better than Mencherson.
  
• April! I got in on the ground floor WRT Somali pirates. They used GOOGLE MAPS to locate the hijacked oil tanker, yet it remains jacked.
  
• May! Jeff Spicoli named Blue Jays GM. A Ghostrunner scoop.
  
• June! An open letter to the Toronto Blue Jays baseball club. Watch for follow-up to this later this month.
  
• July! The dog days of liberated fandom. Please don't trade Roy Halladay.
  
• August! Questions from Girls. The first of a series...
  
• September! Going soft on the Yankees. It didn't last.
  
• October! Kicking over the Angels house of cards. They'd finish dead last in the AL East.
  
• November! I repeat: please don't trade Roy Halladay. Ever.
  
• December! The Yankee hate is back in full force. They actually just hate themselves.

Rocco's Red Sock

Update: Something about that picture just looks right.

Good on him. If not here under my stalkful eye, where else could he possibly go to keep me happy? He'll still get lots of screentime on Sportsnet without wasting away in some National League hinterland. Rocco's signing is expected to be announced tonight at the Boston Baseball Writers Association Awards; where Rocco will receive the Tony Coligniaro award for, as Mr. Rob Iracane said this morning, being awesome. I think Red Sox Rocco is great fun, though it spells bad things for the Jays.

The Tao nailed it as usual today, noting that the Sox signings (Smoltz!) are just as scary as the Yankees recent acquisitions. My esteemed colleagues at Walkoff Walk bookended their day's with Rocco comments. Kris aka CTC aka the resident Red Sox fan had this to say:

If Rocco is really on the health upswing he has the potential to be the best fourth outfielder in baseball. That's a huge asset to a team that employs awesome, but injury prone Florida State Seminole JD Drew.

You hear that Reed? Your mantle of best fourth outfielder in baseball has been passed to a guy with good reason for his scrap and grit. He also has the good sense to let the chin pubes envelop his entire face when the situation calls for it.

For Rocco to provide the Sox with anything more than pure aesthetic joy, he's going to need to improve some of his slightly scary 2008 numbers. He ended up with a Riosian wOBA of .358, but he struck out a shit-ton (30%!) and managed an amazing 20% home run/fly ball rate. Neither of those numbers are sustainable, but the Ks will come down so long as he doesn't take 5 month breaks from the game.

Generally regarded as one of the Good Guys, he'll get a pass from the Boston media horde until May 1st. If he isn't producing at or near the level of unfortunate Hall of Fame candidate Jim Rice at that time, I predict the scene below to unfold in the bowels of Fenway.

On Choice

The cacophony of hand-ringing is reaching epic levels these days, as high profile DH-types and reclamation-styled pitching projects are signing much cheaper deals in far less desirable locales than sunny Toronto. The hand-ringing is such that, had these basement-dwelling molemen not masturbated their palmflesh off long ago, they would now be as fingerprint free as John Doe. Blame quickly falls to either JP or Rogers, for not being in on these bargain-basement sluggers or for slashing the payroll dramatically; leaving bored Jays fans fighting amongst themselves like angry Quebeckers at their Floridian retirement village's Yankee Swap.

The comments following a recent Drunk Jays Fans post reflect this anger, but also reveal some rational thought among frustrated Jays fans. Unless these lowish risk acquisitions blows all expectations out of the water, they are viewed as failures right from the start. When the price on Giambi falls considerably (to nearly Luol Deng levels of thievery, Giambi protecting Holliday is fine work indeed) the outcry explodes from the peanut gallery. If player X signed for Y, how come the Jays didn't sign him for Y + 1??? JP sucks, we're told. Rogers is cheap, we understand.

This thinking is obviously flawed. When teams league wide go into spending freezes, the price of a Giambi or Bradley is brought artificially low. If the Jays chime in with a slightly higher bid, the As or whomever else will come back slightly higher until Fat Slugger X's contract is no longer a steal but a liability.

The other side of the coin is choice. Most free agents go the mercenary route, especially if it they see that particular contract as their career Big One. But if they will be taking a deal well below expectations anyway, why not be choosy where you go? Giambi started his career in Oakland, perhaps he thought best to finish it there? Eckstein took less money to come here last season because he'd have the chance to play shortstop every day.

Pitchers can afford to pick their spots and, as Tomo Ohka & Victor Zambrano can attest, will always sign a cheap deal with a team that sports a big offense (which the 2007 Jays promised but did not deliver) or stands a very good chance of winning many games in spite of rather than thanks to their contribution (here's looking at you Penny). Limit the damage to 3-4 runs allowed in 5 innings of work most times out, grab a dozen wins, turn that into a Carlos Silva deal on the free market. Mr. Scrap Heap can laugh all the way to the golf course.

Of course it's lamentable that the Jays couldn't sign Giambi for less than they paid Eckstein last year, or half of what they pay Johnny Mac. In fact, I just died a little on both the inside and the outside. But there are too many factors at play to simply announce "management is incompetent" and be done with it. Besides, Adam Dunn is still out there, and now LOTS of people are saying he doesn't like baseball. He can't blacklist them all.

Straws Within Our Grasp

The good people at The Hardball Times recently took to changing the way we look at Batting Average on Balls into Play. A neat little stat we can use to determine who may have been lucky, who may have been unlucky, and who may be terrible. When predicting BABIP, one adds .120 to the batter's line drive rate. Where the .120 comes from I honestly have no idea. But these fine gentlefolk decided to dig a little deeper into BABIP, adding many more factors to create a more telling predication of a batter's success.

A quick look at a player like Vernon Wells, you can see how much BABIP hints at potential success. His BABIP goes up, he has a good year. It goes down, he's not so hot. But why? What does this number tell us? Using factors such as speed, patience and contact rates, park effect, GB/FD, line drive rate, spray and many others (read the full explanation here), they created xBABIP, or expected BABIP to determine when a player's been getting lucky and when he's been getting hosed. Their research uncovered quite a few guys that had huge or unexpected 2008's (Ryan Doumit, Milton Bradley, Shin-soo Choo and Giovanny Soto) as players that outperformed their xBABIP as well as potential bargains for 2009 (Nick Swisher, Jason Giambi, Willy Aybar) that didn't get the bounces. Here are the numbers for the Jays core over the last few years. Actual BABIP is simply their non-homerun hits divided by balls in play (PA-K-BB-HR).

Year	Scumbag in Question	BABIP (actual)	xBABIP	Point Diff	Percentage Diff
2008	Vernon Wells	.291	.280	-11	3.64%
2007	Vernon Wells	.260	.292	32	-12.14%
2006	Vernon Wells	.305	.309	4	-1.25%
2008	Lyle Overbay	.311	.310	-1	0.19%
2007	Lyle Overbay	.270	.321	51	-18.86%
2006	Lyle Overbay	.340	.319	-21	6.20%
2008	Alex Rios	.329	.314	-16	4.71%
2007	Alex Rios	.316	.320	5	-1.50%
2006	Alex Rios	.333	.320	-14	4.06%
2008	Scott Rolen	.283	.289	6	-2.12%
2007	Scott Rolen	.282	.290	7	-2.54%
2006	Scott Rolen	.295	.298	3	-0.92%
2008	Adam Lind	.313	.302	-11	3.44%
2007	Adam Lind	.265	.303	38	-14.29%

I believe these numbers tell us quite a few things about the Jays of the past as well as moving forward. Vernon Wells was, in addition to being injured in 2007, really unlucky. His shoulder was so bad it cut his Home Run per fly ball rate to nearly half is career number in 2007, not to mention he wasn't getting any love from the baseball gods. Vernon put up good numbers in 2008, numbers he should have no problem replicating in 2009 if healthy. One possible cause for concern could be the steady decline of his xBABIP for the past three seasons.

Lyle Overbay went from being really lucky in 2006 to freakishly unlucky (and injured) in 2007 to just about right in 2008. Overbay consistently puts the fat part of the bat on the ball, with high xBABIP year in and year out and a nice 20% line drive rate to go with it. Can we conclude that 2008 Lyle is about what we should expect in 2009? Without a marked improvement against left handed pitching, yes.

Alex Rios is a strange case. A little lucky in 2006 and 2008, unlucky in 2007 when he notched career highs in home runs and walk/k rate. Hmmmm Alex, put the bat on your shoulder?

Professional Hitter Scott Rolen steams along, grinds out at bats and hits line drives. One thing to watch is his HR/FB%, which finished a little over 7% for the year. His terrible month of July was the real outlier here, as he managed 0 home runs in 94 PAs. The rest of the year he sat near 12% HR/FB, a number that would suit me nicely for 2009.

Adam Lind is a little worrisome for 2009. He was so unlucky in 2007 with a correction coming in 2008. He really went into the tank in September, but his BABIP stayed high (.329) He's still young so I still have hope that he, unlike Overbay, will improve and show the kind of hitter he was in AAA.

A few other notes on important Jays. Aaron Hill is a player that exceeded his xBABIP in successive seasons but also improved his number from 2007 to 2006. Potential Jay scrap heap find Michael Barrett should take heart in getting terribly unlucky during his last full season .266 actual versus .292 expected. If you were wondering about Rod Barajas or Marco Scutaro; you shouldn't. Neither of them are important nor are they any good. Fine, Marco Scutaro got a little unlucky in 2008 while Rod Barajas's numbers don't count for much because he hits naught but home runs and gets on base less than Johnny Mac. Travis Snider didn't have enough at bats to quality, but surely his xBABIP for 2009 will be in the neighbourhood of .400. BECAUSE HE'S TED WILLIAMS RE-INCARNATE!

GROF Exclusive: Adam Lind's New Years Twitter Feed

Like most young people that refuse to get off my lawn, up and coming Blue Jays slugger Adam Lind combined his always-at-the-ready Blackberry and his desire to record his most mundane thoughts into a Twitter feed. Seems Lind brought some of his boys from back home down to Vegas for New Years Eve. Unfortunately, he's since taken his page down (DON'T BOTHER LOOKING) but my unprecedented access will show lowly scum like us how the big timers do it in Vegas.



Lindiana's Finest





Headed home, we ran this shit. I wuz straight juiced last night! Next time I holla atch ya, I'll be chillin in Flo-Rida! LOL
10:27PM Jan 1 2009 from Twitterberry

Loks liek nobodee pulled, dis place dead NEway. 2:32AM Jan 1 2009 from Twitterberry

Man, don't these girls know who I iz? Once I get that arbitration paper, they recognize!!!11! 1:14AM Jan 1 2009 from Twitterberry

POP THA BOTTLEZ! Happy New Year bicthes!! 2009 Linds blowin up. Fuck the hattters, Imma big leagurr!!! 12:07 AM Jan 1 2009 from Twitterberry

500 for a bottle of Patron???/? We'll stick with Bud Lite. Hoosiers reprazent!!! 11:23 Dec 31 2008 from Twitterberry

Headed out 2 da club. Couple mexican dudes onna Strip told me Weezys gonna be there. We big timin! 11:11 PM Dec 31 2008 from Twitterberry

I cant believe we staying at the Trop. Big extenshun = Hard Rock Suite baby 10:41 Dec 31 2008 from Twitterberry

@Sniderman You needs to relax broseph, LOL @ watching tape on New Yearzzzzzzz 10:12 Dec 31 2008 from Twitterberry

Me an teh crew watching a little Entourage LOl @ Turtle, hes just like my boy D-Rob 9:59 PM Dec 31 2008 from Twitterberry

Imma get so laid tonight, deez ladies know how we do 9:14 PM Dec 31 2008 from Twitterberry

Dinn3r time * big steaks for da big dogz 6:30 PM Dec 31 2008 from Twitterberry

Just got a message from lil Jess, hes running shit @ Circus Circus 3:45 PM Dec 31 2008 from Twitterberry

Last nite was sickness, we gonna do it up big time this NYE! INDIANS FINEST!!!! 2:07 PM Dec 31 2008 from Twitterberry

College Football, Friends Marathons, and Gimmicky Hockey Games

None of these things are remotely as interesting as the MLB Network. The MLB Network that I would have invested a good 30 or 40 hours in today. And there I was, lamenting my Canadian citizenship while not watching the MLB Network. No joke, I'm pissed.

The largely overblown Raptors/TSN 2 debacle helps crystallize the utter contempt television providers and the content providers feel for their customers and the incredible amount of entitlement the average fan has developed in a very short period of time. Falsely entitled as I am in most avenues of life, this is a certain exception. Here and now, I am announcing to all cable companies and television carriers that I will pay ANY PRICE for this television network. Damn my child's education, food, clothing, and general well-being. DON LARSEN'S PERFECT GAME DAMMIT. And that was their first day on the air!!! It will only get better, and be a continued respite from made-for-TV hockey tournaments/cottage industries (this just in: fuck junior hockey) and god-forsaken curling skins games.

I'm sure Rogers will finally make this available to us poor, downtrodden Canadians once they've figured out how best to maximize it as a revenue stream. The appetite for baseball in this country may not be as voracious as for other sports, but that is the beauty of specialty channels, isn't it? I will be stealing it from shady Chinese streaming websites in the meantime.

Report: Jays in as Potential Third Team in Marlins/Red Sox Move

With stories swirling about the Red Sox attempting to reacquire stud shortstop Hanley Ramirez, the Jays have thrown their hat in the ring. No longer content to sit on the sidelines, the Jays realize that they can't afford to fall any further behind the AL East Arms Race.

Which is why the Jays have offered, pending a Ramirez-to-Boston move, to trade places in the NL East with the Marlins. The Marlins, who harbor no false pretense about attempting to compete with their existing division rivals, would get the turnstile boost of 9 annual home games with the Yankees, Red Sox and intrastate rival Rays. The Jays would go from being outclassed by the upper stratosphere payrolls of their existing division rivals to being outclassed by the lower troposphere payrolls of their new division rivals.

The Jays pitching and defense approach would be right at home in the National League, not to mention their complete lack of a viable designated hitter. The Marlins would have a valid excuse to keep Dan Uggla, Josh Willingham and other porous fielders in their lineup because they'd be playing "the American League Way."

Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi, in a rare moment of honesty, acknowledged that Ramirez coming to the AL East would pretty much "spell the end" of his clubs chances of ever competing again. "Look, I don't care if Travis Snider turns out to be Ted Williams himself. If the Sox get Hanley less than a month after the Yanks get Tex, CC & AJ, we're beyond fucked."

Repeated calls to the Marlins front office went unanswered, as they employ only two full-time staffers. One to field calls from greedy AL GMs and one guy that works all concession stands and ticket offices at Dolphin Stadium.

Marcel the Projector Can See Inside Your Soul

If you thought the only benefit of the baseball stats revolution was nerdclusters emerging twice a year from their basement lairs to prop up the stripper and ear medicine industries, you'd be wrong. The real fun: projections!

Imagine the Farmer's Almanac if it were, much like the farmer and his children, on crystal meth. Take a wide range of rate stats, age curves, monkey blood stains and voila! Bill James accurately predicts Vernon Wells's slugging percentage to within 20 points! Add all the individual projections up, you can simulate the entire season! Why even bother playing??? These numbers make for good fun and the occasional fistfight, but how much stock should we place in them? More importantly, who should we believe?

The good men and women at Bluebird Banter tackled the Bill James and ZiPS projections earlier in the year. It would seem Bill James is quite the Blue Jays booster. Fangraphs also makes the Marcel projections available, and they got my attention for a number of reasons. Mostly because they differ from the other two so profoundly on two of the most important Jays in 2009: Travis Snider and Adam Lind.

Travis Snider	At Bats	Home Runs	OPS	wOBA
Bill James	448	19	.804	.351
Marcel	213	7	.820	.355
Adam Lind	At Bats	Home Runs	OPS	wOBA
Bill James	597	23	.843	.365
Marcel	374	12	.755	.326

Encouraging signs? They both agree that Travis Snider is a raking machine. Discouraging? Marcel only gives him 213 at bats, and only 374 to Lind! Does this algorithm have secret access to JP's inner sanctum? Does the mythical Marcel and tangotiger's mathematical machinations foresee a high profile DH riding into town, depriving these young studs of plate appearances? Also, why the disparity? Marcel sees Adam Lind producing 2.1 runs below average, while Bill James believes in 10 runs above! What about the 30 point difference between their projected averages on balls into play? Does Marcel believe Adam Lind will suddenly stop hitting line drives all together?


In all seriousness, this is a big year for Adam Lind. Much like Vernon Wells and Alex Rios before him, this spring presents itself as the long hyped phenom's opportunity to prove he belongs. In some respects, they all are similar hitters. Not particularly patient (though Vernon is much better at getting the bat on the ball), similar line drive and home run/fly ball rates. An outfield of the three of them wouldn't lead the league in home runs, but hardly a weak spot among them.

There is another player that comes to mind when I think of Adam Lind, a player that we can all agree would be a nice ceiling for a player like Lind: Garret Anderson. As the linked chart shows, Garret Anderson didn't really take off as a player until his 26 year old season. They're both left handed left fielders without much patience but enough pop to hold down an outfield spot. If Adam Lind can develop Garret Anderson's consistent production, I for one would be content.

So which projection do we put the most stock in? Which is the profit and which is the lunatic screaming on the streetcorner? Perhaps I will just take the optimistic route for each, project them both as 5 win players and camp out for playoff tickets. For argument's sake; Marcel projected Alex Rios as a .354 wOBA player with 18 home runs and 35 doubles. Rios actually put up 15 home runs, a not-talked-about-enough 47 doubles (tying him with Aaron Hill for the fourth highest Blue Jay total ever) and a .350 wOBA. Pretty accurate, more so than Bill James who overestimated Rios' OPS by 40 points. So we're fucked.

Make it a Ghostrunner Xmas

What do you mean that's not Santa? Red hat, white beard. Same fucking guy right? I enjoyed The Life Aquatic more than 1000 Christmases anyway. Why you may ask? Because Christmas can go get fucked. No matter the circumstance, I'm ready and willing to celebrate the blessed event of time away from work. Paid days off are the real Messiah.

I'm not one to turn down free shit, so in the honor of the season of consumerism, I've thrown together a simple wishlist all my own.

• Yankee Comeuppance. Even though their free spending ways haven't been as bad as I think, my hate has been reborn in surprising and refreshing ways.
  
• The World Baseball Classic to not be a trainwreck. I need more baseball in my life.
  
• To be on the radio. Seriously, somebody put me on the radio. I will keep the "like" count under 50.
  
• Hell, while I'm getting all pie in the sky; season tickets. That would be awesome, hidden wealthy benefactors.
  
• A walkoff walk every night for the entire season. That shrimp should look like Usain Bolt by next October.

One last thing:

Have a good few days off people. Make it happen Zissou!

Weekend Buncheso'stuff

It's the weekend, it's almost Christmas; my least favorite time of year. At its heart, Christmas is a time to appreciate the under-appreciated, like hotter than you think Sinead O'Conner. An everlasting Irish agitator, she wrote some songs (no joke: nothing compares 2 U is a track. There's a lot there), is/was political defiantly, refused to perform on the same show as Andrew Dice Clay, tore up a picture of the Pope, and pissed people off at every turn. Here's to you Sinead, my pants are the real enemy.

Back to Baseball

The other day I wrote a post at Walkoff Walk about fielding being the new darling of Moneyball - underpriced and undervalued. The Mariners were my example of a team that shored up their defense at low cost. Turns out they're taking this whole run prevention thing seriously and hired the right manager. New boss Don Wakamatsu noticed poor results for groundball machine Roy Corcoran and wants to fix it (via U.S.S Mariner):

I look at Corcoran, and opposing hitters averaged .283 against him," Wakamatsu said. "But he had a four-to-one ratio of ground balls (to fly balls). Did they find every hole?

"The fact is that we have to catch more ground balls. I want to bring these kinds of statistics to the coaches and players. It's a way to get better. Maybe it just means we need to shade the middle more, or maybe we need to focus more on what specific hitters do against each of our specific pitchers.

Impressive talk from a manager, not the kind of thing I'd expect to hear out of Cito's mouth. Could it be that JP realized this years ago, thus assembling one of the best defensive squads in baseball? Nah, we wouldn't want to give him that kind of credit.

Speaking of defense, Raul Ibanez's comments regarding defensive stats are certainly interesting, if a little misguided. He offers the "I'm hitting it RIGHT AT people" rebuttal to his poor showing in each and every defensive metric. Sorry Raul, you come off intelligent and informed here, but slightly defensive. Ar Ar.

Weekend Links to Kill Some Time

• My boy David Chalk is counting down the 25 greatest Rays of all time. Rocco ranked 6th, which even I can't argue with. He also re-imagined my Divinity of Rocco Baldelli with a Christmas theme. He's much better with Photoshop than I am with Paint.
  
• I'm trying to put the Ghostrunner on First facebook page to some use. I wrote something completely unrelated to baseball and put it up. Become a friend and check it out!
  
• Noted badass Dock Ellis died this week. He had cirrhosis of the liver, pitched a no-hitter on acid and called Vida Blue his soul-brother. It's a shame that a man like him is doubly rare in today's game: an honest and politically engaged athlete that also happens to be a black pitcher. We need more of both.
  
• The Southpaw is moving on up and joined the MVN network. Good for them. Check out their fancy new space. Congrats to all those fine gentlemen.